Telnet "servername" "portname"

where portname is the TCP port on which sql server is listening on ( you can get this information from the error log)

if Telnet does not...

I think the primary thing that you can or should check is whether the server itself is reachable by a ping.

if you can ping the server successfully, the...

First and foremost if this is a production database look for a proper downtime window.

Also attempt a database backup before trying out anything, but that may fail again.

as a...

Theoretically speaking and from a performance perspective you should segregate location of

1) Data Files.

and

2) Log files.

This is because the IO associated with a data file for a...

if you have both mdf and ldf files then you can attempt attaching the mdf and ldf files. The attaching process is fairly simple and can be done though GUI...

ok do this,:

1) just expand the log file by a little, this will prevent the error during full backup.

2) Then perform Full backup.

3) and Then perform log backup.

In a...

Further if you suspect blocking you can run the following code to either confirm or rule out blocking:

select * from sysprocesses where blocked <> 0

Following is a related thread for the same issue:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlnotificationservices/thread/e04e4ac5-9b2b-4a7f-a491-8c86f9971bee/[/url]

got it, appreciate the detailed explanation.

Can you post the exact error message that you are encountering?

The error related details will facilitate troubleshooting of this problem in further detail.

and in addition to restore headeronly you can also execute "restore filelistonly" to get a list of the database and log files that are contained in the backup set from...

It looks like you want to audit DML, the options available will depend on the server version.

Change data capture and SQL Audit are SQL 2008 features and therefore not...

As a first step I would like to suggest that you start a server side trace to see as to what is happening.

From the perspective of not capturing too much...

ok got it.

The threads that you are seeing from task manager are not all SQL server threads. They are all windows threads and include all processes on the server including...

I think there are instances when SQL Server service account will require access to something that it may not be directly under its purview.

Therefore most DBAs keep life...

I am in complete agreement with Gail.

A DR plan should always include testing of backup restores on a regular basis.

you would surely not want to learn it the hard way....